THERE’S no denying the fierce emotional conviction of “A Very Common Procedure,” Courtney Baron’s new play being presented by the MCC Theater. But this one-act about the burgeoning relationship between a young woman who’s just lost her baby and the doctor who treated the infant never quite comes into focus, feeling more like an outline for a work still in progress.

The action – too much of which is related directly to the audience by the three characters – concerns the tragedy suffered by Carolyn Goldenhersch (Lynn Collins) and her copywriter husband, Michael (Stephen Kunken).

Following the loss of her baby, Carolyn finds herself compelled to seek out and become friends with Anil Patel (Amir Arison), the doctor, who tells us that he finds it easier to deal with the infants in his care than with adults.

It soon becomes apparent that Carolyn’s interest in the easily flustered doctor isn’t really romantic, but rather a strangely complicated need for an emotional connection.

“His face has come to mean so much to me – a replacement,” she says. “For the thing my husband and I have lost.”

Meanwhile, her husband becomes increasingly jealous and angry about the distance between them, and frustrated by her refusal to try and conceive again.

Everything comes to a head in an all-too-symbolic scene in which the doctor instructs the couple in the workings of the human heart.

Director Michael Grief has elicited well-modulated performances from his talented actors, and Baron’s dialogue often registers with a pungent comic force.

But while its subject matter is inherently moving, the play is sketchy in its psychological underpinnings in a way that’s far more ambiguous than intriguing.